D&D Ranger Beast Master: Beast and Ranger are One
The video above from the Nerdarchy You Tube channel is part of the ongoing series “New Ways to Use Recovery Dice in D&D.” In each installment, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted and Nate the Nerdarch discuss alternative uses for hit dice, presenting class-specific options. Focusing on each character class as they appear in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, the options are designed to provide one use for the class in general, plus an additional use specific to each archetype.
One of the class archetypes for the D&D ranger, which is a point of contention among many players, is the Beast Master. A few Nerdarchy staff writers and i recently discussed the Beast Master archetype, and part of our conversation dovetailed with the alternative hit die option in the video.
Unusual RPG Character Builds Tell a Story All Their Own
Years ago, in my great grandfather’s time, the emperor sent out citizens to colonize the wild lands and expand the Empire.
This is how we came to live north of the wall. There we found and settled lands that were more fertile than any the empire had ever seen. The game was plentiful, the water clean, and the soil rich.
We flourished, growing from a settlement to a village growing to a bustling town with every family having its own land.
And then the Greenskins came.
D&D Spelljammer Warlock: Stars are Right
The Owl looking appropriately star warlock-y. [Art by Jesse Ochse from ArtStation]
There is a balance to the encroaching Void in my home campaign of D&D taking place in a Spelljammer-esque setting. A warlock can strike a bargain with a star drake in the same fashion as with a void dragon. The Illumination Pact warlock acts as a counterpoint to the Void Pact. In both situations, excellent material from Kobold Press does the heavy lifting. For the Illumination warlock, Deep Magic: Illumination Magic is the source material.
Star drakes and void dragons both appear in the Tome of Beasts. Both of these amazing creatures fired my imagination on all cylinders when I began conceptualizing the Spelljammer elements introduced to a traditional D&D campaign early on. I won’t reveal too much about the specifics here, since my players read these articles. But as more is revealed to them through our gameplay sessions those details will be shared.
This material is an evolving work in progress stemming from my home game. Although it’s inspired by the Spelljammer setting, it can be adapted for any D&D campaign.
Nerdarchy Arcana: D&D Rogue Archetype – Jester
Arcane Trickster
Ever since I picked up my copy of the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, I’ve been annoyed with the arcane trickster. I’ve always felt it was a waste of an opportunity, like they wanted to have an arcane rogue archetype, but they didn’t know what to do.
So they just slapped a limited stock of wizard spells in there because enchantment and illusion spells are rogue-ish. Perhaps they felt that because D&D rogues rely on Intelligence for investigation for looking for traps or identifying locks, they should just stick with the sole Intelligence spellcaster.
A D&D rogue archetype with chutzpah
However, rogues can also rely on Charisma. Using just the Player’s Handbook, the assassin’s Imposter ability uses Charisma, and that doesn’t even include the mastermind or the swashbuckler, two class archetypes that include Charisma skills, but not Intelligence ones.
D&D Spelljammer Warlock: Into the Void
In a past article I mentioned customized warlock pacts in my fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Spelljammer campaign.
It came up again during a live chat with Nate the Nerdarch.
With my feet now held to the eldritch fire by publicly mentioning it twice, I’d better put money where my pact-making mouth is and get into it.
This material is an evolving work in progress stemming from my home game.
Although it’s inspired by the Spelljammer setting, it can be adapted for any D&D campaign.
How a Poll Created a D&D Character – #NerdyProject
The cover of the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide illustrates a diverse group of D&D characters. [Art by Tyler Jacobson]
The #NerdyProject was a series of 11 polls. Each one narrowed down the field of possibilities for each of the three D&D character aspects. Creating and administering the polls was a lot of fun. Based on the video content and comments the fun continued for the Nerdarchists and community, too.
Now that the polls and D&D character build are complete, I thought it might be interesting to peel the curtain aside and give people a peek at how each poll was put together. The polls were blind – answer choices were purposely vague – and the reasoning behind answer options might be of interest to those who participated or anyone who watched the video.
D&Dized Spider-Man build for D&D 5E
Spider-Man in Columbia Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” [Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures]
But all that aside, what I’ve really been thinking about all day is a character build to represent Spider-Man in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. The Nerdarchy YouTube channel has a long history of D&Dizing fictional characters and objects, and it sounded fun to take a shot at this iconic, beloved Marvel Comics character. My previous crack at D&Dizing something – the Sword of Omens from Thundercats – was tons of fun to work on.
D&D: Uncomplicating Character Concepts
Recently, I was watching Satine Phoenix's GM Tips on Alpha about playing with kids at the table. It's a really useful video, and it made me consider a lot of things I never would've otherwise. Most importantly is how to adopt any given tabletop roleplaying...
D&D Design diary: Blue Magic primal path
[The ongoing live stream RPG review series is on hiatus this week because reasons. In their place enjoy a peek behind how I sussed out my idea for a new primal path for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons barbarians.]
With my first foray into creating content for Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeon Masters Guild, I offered my own take on a popular concept: the blue mage from Final Fantasy lore.
&#%!@?: D&Dizing Al Swearengen
[caption id="attachment_13352" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) stands dead center among many of the characters from the HBO television show Deadwood.[/caption] If you’re not familiar with the Al Swearengen character, then you must not have watched much, if any, of the HBO western drama Deadwood...
Gaming like a box of chocolates: D&Dizing Forrest Gump
Run, Forrest, run! The Mobile Feat in action.
Yes, this week I’m doing something silly. The idea occurred to me during a recent road trip. Behind the wheel of a car for hours on end, I had to have something to think about, and a Fifth Edition D&D version of Forrest Gump came to mind. Once I started thinking about it, Gump has a lot more talents than I initially thought.
And to be clear, all references are to the movie version of Forrest Gump, as I’ve not read the books the character is based upon.
I’ll provide some explanations below, but first, his stats:
Forrest Gump — D&D style
Player Tips – Adding more Class to your Class – Fighter
Happy Friday it is almost the weekend. I am continuing my series on adding more class to your class. Last week we braved the jungle of the Druid class. You can check that one out here.
Today we are going to delve deep into the fighter.
How do You add More Class to Your Class with the Fighter?
Just as the cleric offers different domains, fighters have different types of weapons, fighting styles and archetypes to choose from. Each one of these choices will mean something to a character and tell us something about them.
Player Tips – Adding more Class to your Class – Bard
Last week I started off a new series exploring new ways of looking at classes. I started off with the barbarian and you can read that article here. Today i am going to strut my stuff and talk about the most diverse class in the...
Player Tips Adding More Class to Your Class – Barbarian
Nerdarchist Ted here and today I want to start a whole new series. Many of you may have been playing D&D for a long time and still have associations built into each class. Or perhaps you are new and unaware that each class has a broad selection of options built in outside of the mechanical choices.
While some classes seem to have a profession or idea about what the class is, it is merely a suggestion that flavors the mechanics that go along with the other parts of your character.
So today we are going to look at the barbarian. I will talk a little about the preconceived notions and easy ways to get away from this.
How do You Play a Barbarian?
Multi-Class Character Builds in Dungeons & Dragons 5e Wrap up with the Wizard!
Hello fellow Nerdarchests, Art here. I’m back with the next installment of my series Multi-Class Character Builds in Dungeons & Dragons 5e. If you missed my previous article on the Ranger just click HERE.
Today marks my final installment of the multi-classing in Dungeons & Dragons 5e series. So let’s get started with the Wizard…
Let me take a few lines here to talk about the most divers casting class in the game in my opinion… The Wizard. I think the way the Wizard schools give additional abilities as they level is what makes the class so complex yet simple. With the multitude of spell casting schools to choose from the Wizard gains quite a few options as to how you can play them based on their school of magic. I feel that multi-classing with the wizard opens up an even greater realm of possibilities for characters to delve into both for role-play and for combat purposes. With that, let’s get started…
